Descent
by Chaosisalightsleeper
Summary: The death of Sylvanas. AU.


**I do not own Warcraft. I do not profit from it.**

Descent

Ah, the things that could be done to living flesh._..__was she__ dead yet? _He smiled_. _So much useless mewling, all that pointless fighting_, and for what? _

He had found that if he looked long enough, hard enough—into the mirror of the blade—he could see another struggler—down deep in the darkness there. Familiar, little puppet…foolish, hurting, _innocent_ thing.

He hated it..._this_ _ghost. _Racked by pain and guilt, the tortured thing could not comprehend what had befallen it. Anguish was now the full sum of its meaningless existence_._

_ You are nowhere..._he taunted._..f__orever..._ Laughing, he watched it squirm.

Here is your grand destiny…_embrace it..._

_ Stop screaming, goddamn you…!_

Uther had been a great believer in destiny, he recalled...such a pity that the _holy_ Light never gave him an inkling of his own. Just another broken bug—twisting out its life in the bloody mud of its ignominious end...

Arthas tilted his head, musing. _Am I__ insane? _His smile glinted, a cold reflection of hungry steel.

_ Yes_.

Otherwise, without this altered state of mind—_this_ _elevation—_he would never have the fortitude—_the courage—_to even dare contemplate the matters that compelled him now. Yet, he was perfectly lucid, well aware of the fact that he should be horror-struck, shivering with revulsion, for his actions, but all such capacity had departed him. Saturations of pedantic morality had been dismissed. All was serene now, in chaos. What is the value of a compass, in the black belly of the maelstrom?

He investigated this fearsome threshold where he now stood—this empowering, new dimension of himself. Terrible needs and deeds clamored to entice him. He smiled. No more _Light_, with its constant, tiresome questions of _worthiness_. Such a liberating thing—the destruction of that tedious burden of conscience. There was no indecision here…no reckless impatience to squander him. All those matters that had once tormented him had been cast out.

Now, there was simply…_nothing_. Perfect, thinking, fiendish emptiness. The prospects were limitless.

He glanced back to his immediate concern.

Calmly, methodically, he turned the dagger in his hand. It was so much more intimate with a dagger. With a sword—even sensitive, voracious, _beautiful_ Frostmourne—there was a loss of resonance, of _connection__—_a muting of the sensation of death's subtle delicacy.

He laughed. A lack of_…_was it not a dark sort of empathy…?

The narrow, exquisitely sharp blade did its work.

Steel made a certain blithe sound as it divided aching flesh. Peeling away the layers of conceit and all its banal misconceptions of reality…and _worth_. The ponderous lies, so feverishly cherished, were easily dismantled, eradicated—_purged—_with just one arc of singing steel.

He thought it seemed a sigh of satisfaction—that _harvesting_ sound.

The steel seemed not so much to cut…as to _eat_ its way through living flesh. He wondered, as he so often had of late, just how death tasted to the impeccable blade.

Bright blood welled—a red beast surging from its lair. Arthas chuckled at the thought, rather surprised that she had so much left to shed…

And yet, somehow she still lived; he smiled.

_ But not for long._

He would give to her this gift of the void. The heady freedom of _lifelessness_.

He considered her, tilting his head, drawing runes upon her pale, trembling skin. It seemed only appropriate to use her own blood for his artistry. He smiled as her eyes rolled to look at him. Once striking azure blue, now bloody and dazed with horrific injury, they stared glassily, as if trying to fathom what leaned over her.

_Your worst nightmare_…he thought, amused. _And one from which __you will never wake__…_

The moment of realization, _of recognition_…ah, yes. Well worth waiting for. He laughed a little, a glow of murderous blue in the red-edged darkness of her dying mind.

"I _warned_ you…" he whispered.

She tried to speak, but there were no words for this revelatory juncture, only a sweet shriek of mindless agony, as the dagger delved deeper in its relentless search. Slowly, exactingly, it bared her to his scrutiny. Revealing all she was to him…yes, he required full confession.

_ Living __i__s a sin. _

He would absolve her.

She tossed her head, face blood-speckled, shining hair spilling from her crumpled cowl; she writhed, as if she thought to escape the pain. _How foolish of her_. She was its chattel. He pressed the blade, but gently, only urging it. He did not wish to incite it to excess_—not__ just yet. _

She opened willingly for him—_Oh, yes, such a virgin to the reaping, raping blade_…he thought_. This flesh needs ravishing, _he decided. _To become complete. Finished._ _Mine__._

Smooth skin, flayed down to taut, quaking muscle…yes, it was all about getting underneath the _skin_ of things. Sloughing off the extraneous—the vain inanity of life. He laughed. The knife laughed with him.

"You will not cross me again, will you?" he murmured softly to her, stroking her cold brow with gentle, bloody fingertips. Her head rolled; the muscles in her wisp-thin neck convulsed, grotesque in their prominence. Her slender limbs flailed. Pretty little insect, pretty little mouth stretching wide in a beautiful, voiceless scream.

Well, the blade had burrowed into her lung now; it was no great mystery that her only exhalation was dark gouts of blood. "Don't leave me just yet…" he whispered; his cold mouth caressed her quivering ear. Her eyes flickered to his. "There's so much more for you to see…"

He moved to kiss her then, tenderly, her soft, bloody lips so sweet...she tasted like the tainted Sunwell; she tasted like _him_. He smiled fondly, smoothing the bright beads of blood that dappled her hair, making of them a slick, dark gleam amid the vanquished gold. She was chilled now; and cold was so much better.

The knife tunneled on, twisting, winnowing; he watched it, fascinated. It was a brutal servant to the masterful hand that worked it. She gasped a soft plea for conclusion…as if he were a god to supplicate, one who might benevolently grant her peace. He smiled. Yes, he _was_ a god…just not the one she sought. But he was the one she had found.

He lifted it then—the tiny, still-pulsing heart. Tenacious little thing. Who would have guessed there was so much resolve in such feeble flesh. The exposed vessels squirmed with the final, frenzied rush of blood—vibrating, screaming their horror at this awful trespass.

She looked at it, her expression twisted, esoteric.

He leaned into her and ate what _he_ was hungry for—_her_ _suffering_, _her_ _despair__—_he gobbled it up; and it was _delicious_. Her mouth gaped, lips bowing down, a mask of anguish.

He sighed, tilting his head. _Not very pretty_…he decided, unsatisfied, glancing away from the ugliness of her failure to the pale, pounding thing in his hand. Only_ it_ was beautiful now. He glanced at her wild eyes, brimming, overflowing with murky tears. Yes, she was still there; she was still helplessly watching.

Still _his_…

"You won't be needing _this_…" he said, of the part of her he held in his hand. "Not for _any_ purpose…"

He smiled, lifting it for a mocking kiss…_goodbye_...

And then he took a bite.


End file.
